Purpose

To consolidate, disseminate, and gather information concerning the 710 expansion into our San Rafael neighborhood and into our surrounding neighborhoods. If you have an item that you would like posted on this blog, please e-mail the item to Peggy Drouet at pdrouet@earthlink.net

The Times starts with the example of a San Fernando Valley Metro Red
Line commuter nearly missing grabbing a parking space. This leads to
assertions of “parking shortages” on “L.A.’s light-rail system [sic -
Red Line is heavy rail].” The article goes on to quote various Metro
representatives, then parking expert UCLA professor Don Shoup.
Ultimately, Nelson characterizes Metro parking as a “key policy
question.”

It looks like he is riding the train in Pasadena but, honestly, couldn’t ABC7 find someone who lives in L.A. County?

Sure, transportation issues cross political boundaries, but should
Metro, a governmental agency with jurisdiction over L.A. County,
prioritize limited funds to serve people who don’t live here?

First two general points, then responses to Times article specifics:

1. Lots of People Ride Metro, Few Use Metro Parking

Let me first note that lots and lots of people ride Metro buses and trains. About 1.5 millon every weekday. There’s no “low ridership” issue here. Especially during rush hour, buses and trains are standing room only.

The vast majority of these Metro riders do not park. According to Metro’s on-board surveys,
more than 80 percent of transit riders arrive by walking. Fewer than 4
percent drive and park. Even when excluding buses, just looking at the
Metro rail system, only about 15 percent of riders drive and park. That
is roughly 1 in 7.

The system works. Mostly with most riders paying no attention to parking.

2. It Costs Metro Hundreds of Millions of Dollars to Build and Maintain “Free” Parking

Multi-million dollar investments in parking come with trade-offs. As
an agency with a limited taxpayer-funded budget, Metro can choose to
fund more buses, more rail, more parking, more freeways, more walkways,
bike share, etc. The difficult political job of the agency is to strike a
balance between these competing public goods.

Responding to Various Erroneous or Misleading Points

The Times, ABC7, and even Metro routinely just say “parking” when
they’re really referring to just “free parking.” For example, the Times
(apparently repeating a Metro assertion) states:

In North Hollywood, where the Red Line subway ends, the
MTA estimates that it loses as many as 1,500 riders a day because the
parking lot fills up by 7:30 a.m.

Below is a photo of the North Hollywood Red Line Station parking lot at 7:30 a.m. this morning.

Metro’s
Red Line North Hollywood Station parking lot, which “fills up by 7:30
a.m.” wasn’t full today at 7:30 a.m. Photo: Joe Linton/Streetsblog L.A.

How about the rest of that Times quote of Metro estimating it’s
losing 1,500 riders a day? I think this figure from this Metro staff
report [PDF] which reads:

Staff conducted a review of parking demand using Metro’s
Regional Transportation Modeling Program for the North Hollywood and
Universal City stations. The unconstrained parking demand for both
stations far exceeds supply. Unconstrained parking demand is defined as
the number of spaces required if there are no regulatory or financial
restrictions on use of the parking. The 2014 unconstrained parking
demand at North Hollywood is 3,075 spaces. Metro provides 951 [sic -
actual: 909] spaces, leaving an unconstrained demand of 2,124 parking
spaces.

What is this “unconstrained demand” with ”no financial restrictions”?
It is meaningless nonsense. Ultimately nothing that exists on planet
earth can exist in wholly “unconstrained” theoretical economic
cartoon-fantasy-space. Metro needs to balance its constrained budget.

Metro dressing this mumbo-jumbo up in a scientific-sounding “Regional Transportation Modeling Program” is irresponsible.

The Times reporting that “MTA loses … 1,500 riders a day” is irresponsible.

What’s the “unconstrained demand” for, say, free train rides? Is
Metro “losing” tens of thousands of riders a day because they actually
charge a fare? Is the 405 Freeway “losing” cars because Caltrans can’t
afford to add a dozen more lanes? Is UCLA “losing” students because they
charge tuition? Is the L.A. Times “losing” potential readers because
they don’t give papers away free? No – all of these real-world entities
have constraints. Responsible staff reports and journalism should
reflect this reality.
Back to th
e Times article, which asserts:

Metro has five new rail lines under construction. Only some suburban stations will have parking [...]

I don’t know what definition of suburban is being used here.
Mercifully, the Regional Connector and Purple Line subway do not add
parking. Here are the “only some suburban stations” including suburban Inglewood and suburban West L.A., which will have parking:

One of the biggest barriers to attracting new riders to
Metropolitan Transportation Authority trains is not the price of fares
or the frequency of service. It’s the lack of parking.

This sentence makes it sound like “lack of parking” is a bigger
barrier than “fares” or “frequency” (Ok, technically, the sentence
doesn’t exclude the possibility that fares and frequency could be the
biggest barriers, and parking would be third or so. It would be
misleading to write “One of the five most populous cities in California
is not L.A. or San Diego. It’s Fresno.” Technically it is correct;
Fresno is CA’s fifth most populous city). But what’s a bigger barrier to
attracting riders: fares, frequency, or parking?

Trying to compare these is a bit like apples vs. oranges — actually
it is mostly-capital vs. mostly-operations. The price of fares and the
frequency of service both have an impact on 100 percent of riders. On
the other hand, parking is only used by one rail rider in seven,
according to on-board surveysmentioned above.
Even if Metro budgets could support a huge parking construction boom,
it’s hard to imagine that the percentage of driver-riders would ever be a
majority.

More from the Times article, quoting Metro:

“Our objective is not to make money on parking; our
objective is to get people to ride the system,” said Calvin Hollis, a
Metro managing executive officer.

“Not to make money on parking” sounds kind of neutral, no? If Hollis
were being clear, I think he should have said something more like “Our
objective is to lose hundreds of millions of dollars building parking,
and for parking operations to continue to be a loss leader every year.”

Overall, transit systems, like freeways, bike paths, etc. operate at a
loss. And they should, because the public has chosen to subsidize
certain public goods. The balancing act is finding which mix of
loss-leaders will be most cost-effective in furthering the objective of
“get[ting] people to ride the system.” I’d like to see Metro study what
is most effective. I think it would likely include more frequency of
service, technology, walkability, bikeability, etc.

Again, the Times, again quoting Metro:

Metro officials say they are trying to encourage
alternatives modes of getting to stations, including adding more bike
racks and adjusting bus routes to complement rail lines.

One insightful commentary
on the Metro station parking policy issue arrived via The Source’s
transportation headlines. Steve Hymon quotes the University of
Minnesota’s Andrew Young:

You can build parking lots that [make] transit useful to
those who live some distance away from stations or you can build housing
and destination adjacent to that station that will be used by those in
future who will work and live there.

The question is: do you want to build for an existing constituency or
do you want to build for a currently nonexistent constituency that one
day will live next to the station? In many places, building for the
future is hard for current politicians….people like the status quo and
people in the status quo are the ones who vote and it’s always hard to
change that.

I would assert that today’s
constituency is more like 6/7ths there, as opposed to “nonexistent,” but
I think that this commentary leads to the question of what kind of
spaces do we really want around our transit portals? Will people “ride
the system” if it is mostly surrounded by parking craters? Or if it is
in a pedestrian-oriented mixed-use area, with convenient bus stops and
bike-share kiosks? And, maybe, if we still need it, some very modest
parking available at a very modest fee?